HP3500 losing configuration and poor ping response

[Drew_38]

doubleH just to be clear you are saying that after you stopped the PCM services you had no performance issues with your 35xx and 54xx switches?

[doubleH]

correct. it may take a few minutes to kick in. you also may need to reboot your switches, but once they are back up and PCM is not collecting traffice data you should be good to go.

[doubleH]

just curious. did this fix your issue?

[Drew_38]

Hi DoubleH; not yet got conclusive information on this yet. We use another traffic management package, InMon, which also could be causing this problem. I am hopeful that the new 35xx software release might have sorted out the problem rather than us having to disable such things as Inmon and PCM+. We've not yet been able to put our 35xx back in service to test it out. I'll post a note when I've got some firm info don't worry!!

[Drew_38]

Hi all;

Just to report good news along the lines suggested by BOVC and doubleH.

I didn't need to go the extent of turning off HP PCM or Inmon as suggested. Having thought about the comments above it seemed unlikely to me it was sflow connectivity but would more likely be snmp which is causing the problem. This was backed up by the fact that in the new 3500 software, K11.41, you can turn sflow off and this didn't improve things. So all I did in the end was change the SNMP access levels to 'Restricted' so that our PCM and Inmon servers (or indeed any other servers which I might not know about) are not able to communicate with the 3500. After about 30 mins or so the ping response returned to normal (consistently 1ms or less) and everyone is happy.

So my conclusion is the 3500 and 5400 series suffer problems when a network management system is trying to interrogate it via snmp. That, of course, is not the fault of HP PCM or similar packages but a problem with the switches. So finally I can tell the HP support people, who have been unable to even grasp the concept of the problems we are facing and keep asking the same questions over and over again, where the problem lies and hope they can somehow grasp the fact that their hardware or software is at fault. The situation is not satisfactory as I do want PCM to manage the 3500 so I will still be pressing for a solution.

Obviously, by the way, new software K11.41 didn't make any difference. Thanks HP for making us wait for a software upgrade which didn't fix anything.

I have to express my thanks to everyone in the forum who has offered advice and help, really you've been beyoned excellent.

Cheers,

Drew

[Drew_38]

Hi all;

Just an update on my update above. We still ended up having a couple of wobbles with the HP3500(s) we have on the network, in spite on the snmp changes I made above. Just to be certain there was nothing communicating with the switches I removed all 'snmp-server community' lines from the configuration. This causes an "SNMP Security access violation" in the switch log whenever snmp contact is attempted. That highlighted another server which I didn't know about which was scanning all devices on the network and hence, I imagine, still causing problems with the 3500. Removing the community comfiguration has meant no snmp and the switches are nice and responsive and stable.

So what was the server which was snmp scanning the network? HP Web Jetadmin... damn HP again!

Drew

[OLARU Dan]

Drew,
you could put all your switches and their monitoring stations (PCM/Inmon) on their own subnet, and cut the snmp traffic by means of ACLs on the inter-VLAN router. Also you could put the printers, the print server and WebJetadmin in a similar subnet. This could protect the production PCs and servers from unwanted snmp traffic.

[Drew_38]

Hi Dan;

I can see how your proposal would work. However what I'd like to happen is rather than me have to carry out a load of work as you describe, I'd like HP to actually supply a switch fit for purpose which works in a similar fashion to all their other hardware. That's what I've paid for and that's what I want. As it is it's months since HP have known about this problem and their lack of progress in coming up with a fix I find appalling.

I'll give you some points though Dan!!

Drew

[Drew_38]

Hi all;

Those of you who have been following this thread; thanks all the help and comments are appreciated.

You'll be interested to know HP have sent us a version of the switch software, K.11_61, which, when we installed it resolves the performance issues as described by me above. We can now finally SNMP manage the 5300s and 3500s. So I am grateful to HP for sorting that out; obviously it's taken a while but it's better than them not fixing it.

Cheers,

Drew

[Drew_38]

See above for thread resolution.